Who will win the title? Poll results

By 1970's Gooner

About ten days ago I began a four part series of analysing each of the top four’s strengths and weaknesses and giving my prediction as to where they might end up by the end of next season.

These posts were:

Part I: Arsenal against the odds?
Part II: Liverpool. It’s getting serious.
Part III: Chelsea come back?
Part IV: Back to back for Manchester United?

They attracted a very large number of visits to the site as well as votes on the poll we had set up on who will win the title.

In total 918 votes were cast which are only a very small fraction of the total number of visits. Nevertheless I am told by my statistician friends that this is indeed a large and more than adequate sample to derive meaningful observations.

Let’s get one thing clear. The largest number of visitors to the site are of course Arsenal supporters and you wouldn’t expect any other result but for them to vote Arsenal as the team they expect to win the title.

However what is interesting is the overwhelming support for such an outcome (86% of the total).

It seems that us Arsenal fans have recently grown more confident about our team’s future and expected performance this coming season.

You would not have expected such an outcome for example in the immediate aftermath of Henry’s departure.

In addition the excellent performances in the two pre-season tournaments that Arsenal won appear to have rekindled our spirits. I certainly feel that way.

What is also interesting is that from the other three contenders, Liverpool received the least support with only 2% of the votes! It seems that you, like me, are not convinced that Benitez’s new signings will make any difference to where they will end up this year: 4th.

Manchester United received almost twice the support Chelsea did with 8% of the votes. This might be a reflection of what many people consider that Man U, with their recent signings, have edged a little bit ahead of Chelsea.


Who will win the title? Poll Results

Arsenal 86%
Manchester United 8%
Chelsea 4%
Liverpool 2%

Total votes cast : 918

Thanks for your support, comments and votes!


Who will win the title?

Part I: Arsenal against the odds?
Part II: Liverpool. It’s getting serious.
Part III: Chelsea come back?
Part IV: Back to back for Manchester United?

Preview of Arsenal Vs Fulham

Ajax Vs Arsenal. Interesting choices for Wenger’s team selection

By 1970's Gooner

With only days remaining for the opening game of the new season and no more friendlies scheduled I would expect that Wenger will field what his starting eleven will be for the Fulham game tonight (against Ajax in the Amsterdam Tournament).

This will give them a last outing before the curtain opener and the opportunity to jell together under the pressure of an important game in front of a large crowd and very capable opponents.

Eboue has impressed with his performances in both tournaments and he seems to me to have done more than enough to be starting tonight. This means that Wenger has to make a decision for the right back position between Hoyte and Sagna.

Sagna’s performances have impressed me. After only two appearances he settled in very well and formed a very effective pairing with Eboue when they played together. I think he will get the nod over Hoyte.

Assuming Clichy plays at left back then for the other wide midfield position there are two possibilities. Rosicky and Hleb. I would go for Hleb as he has looked much sharper recently albeit in a different position.

Wenger could of course play Hleb just behind Van Persie where he was very effective in his last game. And Eduardo could be tried on the left wing which would be an interesting choice.

As far as the attack is concerned the question is who Wenger would pick to partner Robin Van Persie. He will most probably go for Eduardo. He did after all score a goal in the last game and you don’t put your new 8.5m signing on the bench do you?

But to me Bendtner’s performances so far have impressed me. And his linking with Van Persie was very good; much better than Eduardo’s.

In addition Van Persie is much more effective playing off a strong front man rather than leading the line. And this was very evident last season when Henry was around and now with Bendtner in the friendlies. When Adebayor returns he will most probably be the front man so where would Eduardo play then?

The rest of the team picks itself I would think, with Lehman in goal and Toure with Gallas in central defence. In the absence of Gilberto Silva a central midfield pairing of Fabregas and the excellent Diaby looks very likely.

Arsenal sign 16 year old Gilles Sunu. The latest addition to Wenger’s babes

By 1970's Gooner

Arsenal's official Web site has included Gilles Sunu in the list of Arsenal reserve and youth players stating that he joined Arsenal on the 31st of July 2007.

Sunu, who has been hailed as Europe’s best prospect, has according to the Daily Mail signed terms with Arsenal for four years and will cost an initial £1million rising up to £2.7m.

The deal, apparently agreed at the beginning of this year was delayed until the youngster turned 16. He was signed on the recommendation of the club's French scout Gilles Grimandi.

Liverpool were also considering making a move for the top French starlet at the beginning of the year when he impressed for the French Under 16s.

Sunu who played for French Second Division outfit Chateauroux is the son of former Togo international, Manu Sunu.

Chateauroux's vice chairman Patrick Trotignon told the Daily Mirror as far back as February of this year when the deal was apparently agreed betweeen the two clubs that:

“He plays as an out-and-out striker like Thierry Henry, but he also can play in midfield. Gilles is lightning quick and he has great technical skills. But the key is that he is very intelligent, older than his years.

Arsenal’s Head of Youth Development, Liam Brady said on Arsenal's official web site:

“He's an all-action centre forward. We had him come to a tournament in Italy in late April and he did very well. He's hard-working and good on the ball.”

It appears that Wenger is relentlessly pursuing his policy of recruiting the best youth talent in the world and nurturing it to maturity and fruition for the benefit of the team and Arsenal’s financial health.

Wenger also recruited the highly promising Nordtveit by traveling all the way to Norway himself to convince the club to release him and secure the signatures!

It doesn’t look to me that Wenger will be leaving Arsenal.

Gilles Sunu Fact File

Date of birth: March 30, 1991
Nationality: French
2nd nationality: Togolese
Height: 180 cm
Weight: 81 kg
Club: Châteauroux
Position: Striker

Arsenal’s transfer kitty is still bulging

By 1970's Gooner

Arsene’s dealings in the transfer market so far are creating very large surpluses of cash that are burning a big hole in his pockets. I calculate that net cash generated from transfers in and out since the window opened are as high as £26m!

They may soon find their way, I hope, on new signings. There's not many days left for the window to close afetr all.

First it was Henry’s sale to Barcelona then Ljumberg’s disposal to West ham and then Reyes’s transfer to Athletico Madrid. The latter for reportedly £8.1m which will bulge the kitty even more.

Arsenal have this annoying policy not to disclose transfer fees paid for players nor related financial arrangements such as players wages and other details. Quite shocking really considering that the company is quoted in one of London’s prestigious Stock Exchange Markets.

Nevertheless the original terms of Reyes’s transfer to Arsenal have been reported by the press at the time. The then 20-year-old winger was signed from Sevilla in a four-and-a-half-year deal worth up to £17.5m.

It was revealed that Arsenal would pay an initial £10.5m with £7m to follow depending on appearances and “add ons” conditional on Arsenal winning the Championship, domestic cups and the Champions League. I presume that Arsenal will have already paid the additional amounts agreed for Reyes’s appearances and for the trophies won during the time he grudgingly spent at Highbury.

We can therefore assume that there will be no significant amounts of money to go out from the £8.1m fee to be received from Real. On the other hand there will be no savings from his future salaries that Arsenal would have paid had he stayed on. The alternative to this transfer would have been another loan deal where his wages would have been met by the club taking him on.

Looking at the net cash generated from transfers in and out since the window opened I calculate that this kitty is as much as £26m!

Transfers in:

Sagna £10.1 (fee £7.5m plus wages for two years reported at £2.6m)
Dudu £10.6 (fee £8m plus wages for two years assumed at £2.6m)
Fabiansky £2.0m (wages not known but assumed not significant)
H Nordveit £2.0m (wages not known but assumed not significant)

Total £24.7

Transfers Out

J Aliadiãre £1.5m (wages not known but assumed not significant)
T Henry £ 29.0m (fee £16m plus wages for two years reported at £13m),
F Muamba £ 2.0m (wages not known but assumed not significant)
F. Ljungberg £10.2m (fee £3m plus wages for two years reported at £7.2m),
J. A Reyes £8.1m (no saving on wages assumed as explained above)

Total £50.8

In order to compare like for like this calculation takes into account not only the transfer fee but also two year’s salary to be paid for the players brought in and similarly the salary saved for the players transferred out. A two year horizon is chosen even if Henry’s contract had four years left because Ljumberg’s contract had two years remaining.

In a comment on a posting on the same subject it has been correctly pointed out to me that Henry’s merchandising income should also be factored out. This is difficult to gauge.

However account has to be taken that sales of shirts etc will in part be switched to other Arsenal favourite players. It has been reported that sales of shirts with Fabregas on the back were much more evident during the emirates Cup than before. In addition merchandising sales will go up due to the new players coming in like Eduardo for example.

Still it’s a bulging kitty which ever way you look at it. The question that begs itself is will Wenger buy any more players? The money is there!

Arsenal’s line up against PSG in The Emirates Cup. Toure and Gallas both captains!

Arsenal’s team in their first game for the Emirates Cup against PSG includes Bendtner being paired up front with Robin Van Persie. It seems that Wenger is trying out different combinations of pairings for the forward positions to test the compatibility and chemistry between the players.

In the midfield Fabregas and Diaby continue the impressive partnership which performed so well against Salzburg in Austria. It seems that Wenger is obviously looking to make this pairing get used to each to each other as it would seem they will be playing together very often once the season starts. Especially since Gilberto will be starting his preseason much later than the rest of the squad.

But Wenger’s choice for the wide midfield positions are Denilson and Flamini. They are not going to give the team width are they? It looks like Wenger is trying to give everyone a game.

In defence Toure and Senderos will start and there is also a start for Sagna who came on as a substitute in the second half for the friendly in Austria. He will play at right back and Clichy returns at left back.Almunia starts in goal.

The interesting aspect about the captaincy is that Toure will captain the team in the first half and then Gallas will come on in the second and assume the captaincy. I am not for this sort of confusion in who is going to be the captain of the Club. He has to be one player and he has to be named by Wenger. Only in his absence should he then name the new captain for the day. A kind of vice captain. Just like it is for the penalty takers in a team.

It seems to me that Wenger has invented this multi captaincy format purely to pamper Gallas who has made angry noises at the state of things with the club recently. Enough of this I say. If Gallas is not happy then get him out.

It is interesting to note that both the previous Arsenal captains were given the arm band in order to appease them. They both eventually left the club!

Rodrigo Palacio. The front man missing from the post Henry puzzle? Plus video clips.

By 1970's Gooner

I did insist that Arsenal needed to recruit an out and out striker; and that Da Silva wasn't enough. He is a good goalscorer but he cannot lead the line that effectively from the front due to his size.

In order to utilise the three fantastic midfielders at Arsene's disposal (Silva, Cesc and Diaby) Arsenal's preferred formation will be either 4 3 3 or 4 5 1.The front man therefore will play a very important role at the top of the formation. And it seems that Wenger will go for the Argentinian Rodrigo Palacio of Boca Juniors.

He has a very good goals to games ratio of 0.5 or 39 goal in 79 games. And as you can see from the video clips he can score all type of goals: from long distance, inside the box, tap ins and headers too!

And he is at 25 not a typical Arsene signing as he is not a kid with potential (!) and is experienced enough to slot straight into the team. He will need of course time to get used to the Premiership.

Oh and he will, apparently, wear the No 14 shirt!

He will be, I hope, the front man missing from the post Henry puzzle.

Bakari Sagna in action. Video clip (for only 25 seconds)!

This is what I could find of Bakari Sagna in action.

He shows some really nice skills on the ball for a right back but as you will also see he can tackle too. A nice combination.



You only have to concentrate for the first 25 seconds though as the video contains clips of other players after that.

Wenger’s transfer activity runs large profits and bulges the transfer kitty.

Excellent news coming out of Arsenal. And it is not only from the footballing side. Wenger, remember, has an economics degree and he is not one to ignore the financial side of the football business.

Sagna apparently has undergone a medical and is set to join for £7.5m. His pay will be £25,000 per week which translates to £1.3m a year.

But at the same time Freddie Ljumberg is finally set to join Fiorentina for, wait for it, £5.5m and Arsenal will be saving about £70,000 per week in wages or another £3.6m per annum! Since Freddie had another two years of his contract left then the saving on his wages is about £7.2m.

If you add the transfer fee of £5.5m then the total “income” from Freddie’s transfer will rise to almost £12.7m! Now this is what I call “good business”. Let’s hope it goes through.

If the Sagna deal goes through then the outlay for transfers so far will be as follows:

Dudu £8m
Sagna £7.5
Fabiansky £2m
H Nordveit £2m
Salaries for the above over the next two years: about £6m
(although I am not aware of Dudu’s salary I have assumed that it will be similar to Sagna’s and I have also added another £0.8m for the rest)
Total : £25.5m.

But if you look at transfer activity out of Arsenal then Wenger is very much in the black.

First and foremost is the huge saving on Henry’s transfer which amounts to £29m!

This includes the transfer fee received at £16m and the salary saved at £13m over the next two years (I chose two years so that a comparison could be made with the saving on Freddie’s salary which had two years to run).

Freddie’s departure will save another £12.7m as explained above.

But wait there are also the transfers of J Aliadiãre and F Muamba adding about another £4m in total.

If my arithmetic is right then total savings (over the next two years) from transfer activity out of Arsenal will come to a staggering £45.7m!

And an outlay so far (inclusive of the Sagna deal) of only £25.5m.

A profit of about £20m (and this doesn’t include the probable £6m to £8m that the sale of Reyes to Real Madrid will fetch!).

Add to this profit the £40m transfer kitty available to Wenger and you have a staggering £60m to spend on new players.

Come on Mr Wenger lets get some more retail therapy. We need it.

Sagna in London for talks. Martins at £13m also Arsenal bound?

Some good news at last.

The Independent reports that Bakari Sagna was due last night in London to talk terms after Arsenal agreed terms with Auxerre.

The fee is believed to be in the region of £7.5m. Apparently Sagna will sign a five-year contract and his wages will be about £25,000 a week.

Wenger may be interested in buying additional cover when Eboue will be away at the Africa Nations Cup. This will be an expensive cover at £7.5m and judging by how frugal Wenger is with Arsenal’s cash this may not be the only reason why Sagna is interesting him.

There is a possibility that Wenger will “promote from within” with Eboue being pushed forward to the right midfield position. This may mean that Wenger will not sign another wide player.

It is also reported that Arsenal may trigger the buy out clause in Martins’s contract with Newcastle which is set at £13m. Apparently Newcastle are resigned to losing him as he is dissatisfied with his current 60,000 a week package (he wants parity with Owen who is on 100,000 a week!). I am not sure if Wenger and the Board will actually go that far and agree to this compensation package.

However Martins has pace and given the opportunities he will get you goals. But he is also relatively young at 23 (next October if his birth certificate is to be believed) and I don’t really see him as a centre forward. He is more a winger or an inside forward playing off the centre forward.

Nevertheless if these reports are true then it seems that Wenger will not go for the traditional centre forward but opt for short and pacy front men (like Eduardo Da Silva) who will offer more options and flexibility.

If these two transfers actually go through then I feel that they will go a long way to ease the fears of many Arsenal fans that the team is lagging behind their main rivals in the transfer market.

Will they ease Gallas’s fears though?

An open letter to Gallas: Shut the hell up or get out.

Dear William,

We all read your comments on your personal web site (with the help of translators). And to be truthful there is a lot of merit in what you are saying.

We are all concerned about the future of Arsenal Football Club and especially that of Wenger who has said he will not at the moment commit himself to the club beyond the end of his current contract.

We are all concerned that other clubs are sniffing around to poach some of our best players, like Fabregas, especially now they have sensed that we are vulnerable after our talisman and greatest player moved on.

We are all also concerned with the relative lack of activity in the transfer market especially when our rivals are breaking the bank to recruit the best players around.

Liverpool splashed out a total of 40m so far, Manchester United close to 50m and counting and Chelsea are now opening their vast purse with a bid for Malouda for 14m and still counting. And Wenger still persists with recruiting young and unknown players no one has ever heard off. Total outlay so far a miserly 10m! Hell even Spurs have spent more than Arsenal!

We are all concerned that the team, although showing great promise, is still littered with relatively inexperienced young players who exhibit all those annoying characteristics of being brilliant one game and distinctly lacking the next.

We do of course understand that at this stage of your career you would want to play in a team challenging for the top both domestically and in the European competitions. And you may feel that this Arsenal team may not get there in time for you. I disagree with you but what matters is what you think.

And you are right to want to meet with Wenger next Wednesday to discuss his plans for the future and how we are going to challenge for the top and not for third place again. We would all want to do that. You can of course.

What we don’t understand is why you would want to go public with such hurtful comments which serve no purpose but to destabilise even further the players and Arsenal Football Club.

What we don’t understand is why the hell couldn’t you wait to meet with Wenger first before spouting your mouth out.

And then if you find you are not satisfied ask for a transfer and get the hell out.

Best regards and good luck with your new employers.


1970’s Gooner